Thursday, June 15, 2006

As we have seen with the CEI carbon dioxide commercial, and from other activity, the public understanding of the 'scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming' is subject to an ongoing FUD marketing onslaught with the latest salvo coming from Dr Bob Carter saying there is no such thing. Pity that Carter is funded by ExxonMobil to say these things, or he could be bearing good news. But he is not.

Science Magazine details the scientific consensus on climate change that was first articulated in 1988 when the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme co-established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the express purpose of evaluating climate science to inform public policy. Their information:

"Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations"

The article further details the chorus of other American scientific bodies with a relevance to climate science who have made statements in support of the conclusion that global warming is man-made:

The American Meteorological Society

The American Geophysical Union

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Not only is the consensus firm and conclusive, there is no scientific dissent to the consensus. A study of 928 climate-change scientific abstracts published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 showed no disagreement with the scientific consensus:

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Think about it, we've had a solid scientific consensus that we are causing global warming since 1988. How do we explain that to the grandkids? Our inaction can only be excused by action now.

The CEI commercial - 'Carbon dioxide: Some call it pollution. We call it life'.